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Adobe unveiled the latest rendition of its popular photo-management software Lightroom on Tuesday, introducing a host of new features designed to appeal to professional and amateur photographers alike, including a cleaned-up user interface and video-editing capabilities.

Some of the latest functionality have been around since Adobe unveiled Photoshop Lightroom 4 Beta in January. The software maker said thanks to more than 250,000 downloads and an active testing community giving feedback online, developers were able to spot and fix 800 bugs. More than 2,700 photographers helped shape the final product, which is available for shipping and download beginning today. The full-version of Lightroom 4 retails for $149; upgrade and student licenses cost $79.

Lightroom got a slight facelift in its latest version. Editing controls have been simplified so that exposure, for instance, now encompasses brightness and recovery. The sliders are now by default in the center (zero) position, which makes much more sense than starting at an arbitrary numerical point. Shadow and highlight controls are more powerful in Lightroom 4 as well, able to recover vast imaging details once lost in overly bright and dark images. The below two photos show how much detail you can recover with Lightroom 4.

Image: Adobe

Image: Adobe

Video support is a welcome addition as well. Even old-school photog pros get intimidated by video-editing software. They might occasionally shoot footage on their Canon 5D Mark II, but it’s easier to stash those .movs in a folder to be forgotten about than to actually learn how to use Avid. Now, Lightroom can catalog video clips alongside images and also includes basic editing capabilities, such as the ability to play and trim clips, export stills from videos and make adjustments.

One of the smartest features of Lightroom 4 is flexible brushes that let you make adjustments in specific parts of a photo, so you can bring out details in targeted areas. Furthermore, a special brush makes white balancing a cinch, even when shooting single images with varying lighting. The ensuing results are natural colors and images that come out as intended.

Photographers love to capture so they can share with others. Whether that means sending large attachments over email or uploading to Facebook, Lightroom makes it easy to do because of its integration with Facebook and photo-sharing websites, and a new internal email client that works with Gmail, AOL and other email services.

The new Lightroom is a combination of the overdue (email integration, video cataloging) and inventive (selective brushes). Together, these features make up a powerful tool to manage, edit and share large photo libraries.

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